


What Song the Syrens Sang

by laideur



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:46:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laideur/pseuds/laideur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson listens to some music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Song the Syrens Sang

Thankfully, I lack a refined appreciation of music.  A dance hall is as good as a symphony for me, and in my ignorance I can regard the endless string of sonatas and caprices and concertos that flow through our sitting room as a friendly cacophony, regular and reassuring as the rattle of carriages in the street.

I could even say I enjoy them.  Their complexity and the subtlety with which they are played are quite wasted upon my artless ear.  But music is the balm of the soul for all creatures that have one.

I do not know what he plays on his violin; I cannot give a name to it.  I only know that it is for me.  Why else would he leave his bedroom door ajar just far enough for me to glance his patrician profile reflected in his shaving mirror, glance him from my armchair at this fortuitous angle.  Some mysteries are lost to time but others may be guessed at.

But I am impervious.  When he makes love to me with his violin I stay anchored to my armchair, newspaper steady in my hands.  It is a game such that I can win only through inaction.  Were I to meet his all-seeing eye in the glass, I would be unmoored.

How lucky I am that I am not musical myself, or else I would be in desperate straits, forced to endure, day after day, the contrivances of his terrible art that choke the air itself and cause the walls to ring and shudder.

How cunning a way to break a man, to taunt him with what he must gainsay.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the epigraph from _Murders in the Rue Morgue._


End file.
